Awakening
by retina burn
Summary: Emily tries to reconcile what it means to come back to life.


**Title:** Awakening  
><strong>Author:<strong> midnight_blue  
><strong>Rating:<strong> G  
><strong>Spoilers:<strong> Season Seven, through "Epilogue"  
><strong>Summary:<strong> Emily tries to reconcile what it means to come back to life.

When he reaches for her, in that false realm of consciousness that makes a brief appearance sometimes in the middle of the night, the bed is empty. There is a small delay before that fact registers in his sleepy mind, and he pulls himself up slowly, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness as he does a cursory scan of the room for her. He slips out of bed and pulls on a robe, once it becomes clear that she's no longer in the room at all.

He wanders downstairs, finding her sitting cross-legged on the recliner in the den. The table lamp is on, but at the lowest setting, so it casts an eerie shadow across her face, one that seems fearful of what it might find if it shines too deeply in her eyes.

He moves closer, and decides towering over her isn't the best way to have a conversation, so he perches on the edge of the sofa.

"Emily?"

For a minute, he thinks she hasn't even heard him, since she doesn't move or react. But then her legs finally get tucked beneath her, making her look small and vulnerable, adjectives which seem unnatural to attribute to her.

"Bad dream," she explains, voice soft and mournful, like winds at funerals. This isn't an infrequent thing for her; in fact, the bad dreams seem to be happening more often, sometimes multiple times a night. But this one was bad enough to make her leave the bed.

He waits for her to describe the dream, feeling like it's important to let her open up about this on her own terms. If he has to push and prod, though, he will.

"You died," Emily adds, "Doyle. He got to you somehow, and when we- when _I_ found you, he had-" She inhales sharply, choking down a sob, and continues: "He tortured you, put a bullet through your head. And then he got to me." Her hand unconsciously brushes against her torso, where he'd impaled her. "I could feel it all over again."

Dave moves swiftly, kneeling in front of her. The dim light from the lamp seems to think the unspoken emotions in his eyes are far more worthy of illumination, and a few steady beams catch on the love there, hold to it, make it shine for _her_.

"I died again."

He has no experience to fall back on, no way to connect with her on what that must have done to her mind. He's been in tough, even traumatic situations before, he almost got killed a few months ago when that UNSUB leveled a gun at his head, and Morgan interceded. But there's no frame of reference for this, and attempting to speak to what she felt won't feel authentic. It was cold, and dark for her, when her heart stopped in that ambulance. He'd known his own kind of darkness in those ensuing months, and in a place far removed from him, she was dealing with her own demons.

"_Is_ there something better out there, something better than what I saw?" She queries, plaintively.

"Yes."

"How do you know?"

"I don't," he answers candidly, "but I can't live my life and _not_ believe that."

Her dark eyes search the floor, the wall, and then his face. "I want to believe that, I want to more than anything, but I don't know how."

He tries for a different approach, preferring not to patronize her. "What _do_ you believe in?"

The tip of her tongue darts out to lick her lip, which she then bites lightly. She gives that question the amount of thought it deserves, tilting her head to the side a little, loosening her taut muscles. "You. Us. The team, the job we do..."

"Yourself?" He questions.

There's a soft, derisive chuckle, and she ducks her head. "I'm working on it."

He leans in further, and she's about to snap about this not being an interrogation, but his voice gets even softer, his hands reaching to take hers. "What are you working on?" He knows, or he knows most of it, but he wants her to say it out loud.

There's another long pause before she answers: "I spent so many months alone, I had no idea when I could come back, when I could see you again, if ever. I had to let go of everyone, and now I _am_ back, and I'm trying to tell myself that it's okay to let you in again. But it won't always be okay, because we could lose each other." She breathes out, one bitter laugh escaping. "And _it_ sucks."

That's the first rule of this job, that nothing is certain, that they could lose each other as quickly as it takes a person to draw in a breath.

"So believe in what you know, what you have," he says, stroking her knuckles. "We have _this_. Nothing else is guaranteed."

He doesn't have an answer for everything, all the time, as much as he might like to believe otherwise. But tonight, he's hitting all the right buttons, and it's both comforting and endearingly frustrating, partially because it's easier to just stay where she is, where it's safe. But it does compel the barest hint of a smile.

"You're amazing, you know that?" By her tone, he can't tell if she's being sarcastic or sincere.

"Just born that way," he responds anyway, without missing a beat. It's familiar, it's _him_. God, it's him: the familiar curve of his skin when he touches her, the way his whole body steadies her, illuminates the dark corners of her soul.

One of her hands slips out of his to brush against her torso again, the area still rippling with phantom pains. With his free hand, he slips a few fingers beneath her shirt, tracing the light pink flesh that remains as an immutable reminder of her brush with death.

"It's fine, _I'm_ fine," she asserts, though the unnatural shaking in her hands belies that declaration.

"_This_ isn't fine, Emily," his voice is soft, but firm, daring her to contradict. "Don't tell me something because you think I need to hear it, or because you need to say the words until they sound authentic. It won't be true, and you won't believe it, until you tell yourself that it's okay to be afraid, that something bad happened to you, and that you are stronger than _every _bad memory, every dark thought that passes through your head." He pauses, sighing a little. "Ever since you got back, you've been dealing with everyone else's issues, this is all finally catching up with you."

She knows all the reasons _why_ she's been compartmentalizing to the extreme; there's the obvious, of course, the fact that she doesn't want to think about what happened with Doyle, because then there's the memory of the sniper gun aimed at Rossi's head, of the pain, the darkness of death, the months in exile. She doesn't want to think about how she lost all of them, in a way, how she has to retrain her mind to let them all in again. They were alive, an ocean away from her, but the loss of them might as well have been like a death, and it's a very peculiar thing to be among ghosts with warm bodies and pulsing hearts. It's made her more afraid than ever of loss, more acutely aware of the fragility of life, and just how precious they all are to her, Dave most of all. The mere thought of losing him fills the chambers of her heart with an icy stiffness that even the sensation of her own death can't rival.

"You are not okay, not tonight. But you will be."

She hears what he's saying, and every word takes root in her spirit.

"You'll have this scar for the rest of your life, Emily, and you can look at it everyday and think of that cold, empty place you told us about, you can think about the pain, the loneliness," he says, knowing that it _will_ be all she thinks about, at least for a little while, because that's how this works. "But you came back. _You_ are a miracle. This isn't a blemish," his fingers kiss the scar again, "this is a triumph."

It would've been safer not to have slept with him to begin with, safer to have never uttered those words that irreparably bound people to each other, that stripped them of complete control, that put their hearts at the mercy of the universe. So many things would have been easier, and less dangerous, if she had kept herself at a distance. But she took that risk before.

The nightmares won't magically go away tonight, tomorrow, or even next week. The thought of Reid's warm afterlife filled with light will soothe the sadness it inevitably begets, and the scar from her attack will always be there. But these are all the simple facts of her existence right now, and they will remain regardless of whether or not she tries to do this alone, or lets Dave guide her through it.

Leaving him now would be easier than losing him to another fate, but this is something she _can _control, the one thing over which she has absolute power.

Her hand finally leaves her torso, seeking out an affirmation as she presses her palm flat against his heart before leaning her forehead against his. Her eyes slip shut as she savors the moment, the music of his life, the way she can feel him down to her bones as his heartbeat whispers assurances to her. She could be safe, and walk away, and be haunted by silence.

But if all she has are memories, she wants to ache for his touch, and long for the timbre of his voice, not wonder what it might have felt like to be held, and held, safe from the trembling of earth.

Tonight, she thinks, she'll sleep. And tomorrow, she'll fight.

_fin._


End file.
